Posted
by
timothy
on Friday April 18, 2014 @06:32PM
from the many-of-them-deserve-disrupting dept.

waderoush (1271548) writes "In April 2012, former Snapfish CEO Ben Nelson provoked both praise and skepticism by announcing that he'd raised $25 million from venture firm Benchmark to start the Minerva Project, a new kind of university where students will live together but all class seminars will take place over a Google Hangouts-style video conferencing system. Two years later, there are answers – or the beginnings of answers – to many of the questions observers have raised about the project, on everything from the way the seminars will be organized to how much tuition the San Francisco-based university will charge and how its gaining accreditation. And in an interview published today, Nelson share more details about how Minerva plans to use technology to improve teaching quality. 'If a student wants football and Greek life and not doing any work for class, they have every single Ivy League university to choose from,' Nelson says. 'That is not what we provide. Similarly, there are faculty who want to do research and get in front of a lecture hall and regurgitate the same lecture they've been giving for 20 years. We have a different model,' based on extensive faculty review of video recordings of the seminars, to make sure students are picking up key concepts. Last month Minerva admitted 45 students to its founding class, and in September it expects to welcome 19 of them to its Nob Hill residence hall."

Academia squanders vast sums on quasi-professional athletics programs, and other activities that basically qualify as student entertainment, but administration is actually where all the big money gets wasted:https://chronicle.com/article/Administrator-Hiring-Drove-28-/144519/

We absolutely need "start up" universities that disrupt existing universities by minimizing administrative costs, well administration almost never shrinks except by replacing the whole institution, but..

The Ivy League was basically a formal gentleman's agreement (you know, back from the good old days where they banned women and blacks from campus and had strict quotas on Jews) that they would mutually agree to be terrible at sports in order to maintain high academic standards.

Everyone who attends an Ivy League school to play sports is someone who would have been a serious consideration for admission without their athletic ability.

The Ivy League was basically a formal gentleman's agreement (you know, back from the good old days where they banned women and blacks from campus and had strict quotas on Jews) that they would mutually agree to be terrible at sports in order to maintain high academic standards.

Everyone who attends an Ivy League school to play sports is someone who would have been a serious consideration for admission without their athletic ability.

Of course they're going to be terrible at sports. They don't have any black people on their team!

The Republicans who were responsible for emancipation (as an act of war against the rebellious South) is only vaguely related to the current Republican party. The Democrats have a closer link, and again, the civil rights movement was a political attack against the Dixiecrats, who pretended to be Democrats, but actually had an independent agenda.

P.S.: Given what the Federal Govt. has become, are you so sure states' rights was a bad idea? You can trace the current Federal Govt. back to the centralization imposed (by both sides!) during the Civil War.

P.P.S.: Under privitization, prisons have become defacto sources of slave labor. So don't claim that slavery has been eliminated. It's nature has been changed, but it isn't gone.

P.S.: Given what the Federal Govt. has become, are you so sure states' rights was a bad idea? You can trace the current Federal Govt. back to the centralization imposed (by both sides!) during the Civil War.

And the 17th Amendment didn't help either, now that there's no representation of state government interests in Congress.

In theory, but most of the people from those states don't really know anything about their state government's problems. And they seem to be happy to let the federal government grab every bit of power and money from the states, until suddenly they wake up wondering why their state government is so useless and on the brink of collapse, and the federal government is such an all-powerful bully.

Similarly, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed with stronger Republican support in Congress (80%) than Dem (60-70%).

True, but that is an artifact of the unusual configuration of the Democratic Party from the 1880s to the 1980s, and is not reflective of the two parties' identities today. For many decades, the South was dominated politically by "Dixiecrats [wikipedia.org]" - Democrats in name (because the Republican Party was so identified with the North) but much closer to modern Republican values in terms of social and fiscal conservatism, hawkish defense views, religious issues, etc. Dixiecrats were something of a historical anachronis

The Republican party of the 1860's in addition to being the Civil Rights party, also supported higher taxes, trade barriers (in the form of tariffs), fiat currency, expansion of the railroad network, and supported public education.

Oh, did that hit a little close to home? What does it say about our elites when they can't take a little (well-placed and accurate) criticism? Why are you using a word like "capitalist" as an epithet?

A quick question: how many corrupt government officials will the Ivy League graduate this year? How many of them will go on to oppress the American people with outrageous, unworkable ideas while all the time enjoying the approval of their own consciences? The Ivy League exists to perpetrate a culture of c

From my essay discussing excellence vs. elitism & privilege: http://www.pdfernhout.net/post... [pdfernhout.net] ----So, the question becomes, how do we go about getting the whole world both accepted into Princeton and also with full tenured Professorships (researchy ones without teaching duties except as desired?:-) And maybe with robots to do anything people did not want to do? This is just intended as a humorous example, of course. I'm not suggesting Princeton would run the world of the future or that everyone would r

In many cases what you suggest is sound. In many other cases, it is not.

For instance, you could probably get away with an apprenticeship for computer programming. Yet you would not get away with an apprenticeship for computer science. There is too much background knowledge that must be acquired for that to be viable. Besides, universities are pretty much an apprenticeship for computer scientists once they hit graduate school. (Assuming that the student is going into research, of course.)

Universities also serve many other functions. At least that is the case for students who are going about things in an intelligent manner. Since the goal is learning, rather than training, the student is free to think. You also have opportunities to make contact with other people in the field, may they be your peers or your instructors. This opens up both research and employment opportunities.

That all assumes that the student is doing more than attending lectures, reading books, and completing assignments. It assumes that the student is being more than a student. One of my professors put it best when he said that he isn't the instructor and we aren't his students. Rather, we are all colleagues. Unfortunately, most of the students didn't get that.

Because then companies would have to pay for employees' training and education instead of letting people pay for it themselves. Didn't get overqualified enough for that internship or gain enough relevant skills on your own time and dime? No job for you, we'll just find somebody from India who did.

Umm, have you looked at who runs the schools that are failing to teach minorities to read? In particular you might want to take a close look at the party affiliation of those running the school boards, and the rest of the political machinery of the local government in those place. Further, you might want to look at the history of the political party in question. Then you should ask yourself, if they still held to the political philosophy and beliefs they held in 1860, what would they do differently to bette

You people are no more education experts because you were students than you are dental experts because you've had cavities!

It has little to do with the political parties. The political system is a big factor in today's problems but it is not the parties who are to blame; other than for their contribution to a dysfunctional political process and for their pandering to an ignorant public demanding idiotic things with no basis in reality. Things were better when only 1 party pandered and education was much lower of importance to voters. It became important as everybody wanted their brat to have more earning potential. People don't really want their kid to THINK, they want them to get a high paying career (the nutty sports parents are a good example.)

There is plenty of science on how poor kids are greatly impacted by their lifestyle; it has more impact than the education system; but it is far easier to blame things disconnected from your responsibilities! The conditions under which poor children live are collectively OUR responsibility; and that goes for abused and messed up children who are not poor but who damage the learning environment. We can't demand responsibility from parents or their children for their actions-- that doesn't poll well, so as a result any successful politician of either side picks the best lies to tell the voters.

Doesn't matter if you vote for those who "reform" the system or hire private; they both pitch a set of metrics to sell the parent - and selling is not the goal. Public education didn't put anything into marketing itself in the past; but now public elementary schools budget for marketing (which just reflects a larger societal problem.)

Then you have the matter of trying to succeed 100% with no margin of error. It's a great example of perfect being the enemy of good. You can break a good thing by trying to get that last few % not to mention all the effort and resources that last few % can cost... Yeah, I'm saying it is ok to have an acceptable failure rate. It happened in the past and they got us here to our constant reform mess when we are going down hill trying to perfect it... or more like perfect the perception of it.

Your "host files engine" is a useless, CPU-sucking piece of crap, and I am very far from being the first one to say this. (Furthermore, you actually boast about its horrid performance as if it were something to be desired.) In addition, it overrides the Task Scheduler for no good reason whatsoever. That in my opinion qualifies it as something I would never in a million years permit anywhere near any machine that I use or administer; IOW it is for all intents and purposes malware and no amount of your ranting and raving and trolling and crapflooding is ever going to change this fact.

Are we clear on this? Great! Guess that means you're free to sod off now.

It is beyond me why you waste your time replying to this guy. What he does is just attention-seeking behavior, and you're encouraging it by acknowledging him. Just ignore him; nobody in hell is taking him serious so you don't need to worry about defending your reputation.

I would even go as far as saying that even the sig is unnecessary. Hanging out the dirty laundry of someone who is clearly suffering from mental illness is a bit like beating up a little child for calling you names. Stiff upper lip and all

I quoted *nine different comments* from *nine different people* who said they tried the product and found that, basically, it didn't work. And I didn't see a single positive comment amongst the entire bunch.

BTW, whether or not *I've* ever written a disk defragmenter has fuck-all to do with the issue of how well *this* disk defragmenter works or doesn't work, so don't even bother with the attempt at misdirection.

Did you fail to notice that the person I was responding to was saying that this was a Republican scam to destroy education?
More importantly the idea that we are collectively responsible for anything is part of the problem. The only kind of responsibility that matters is individual responsibility.

Umm, have you looked at who runs the schools that are failing to teach minorities to read? In particular you might want to take a close look at the party affiliation of those running the school boards, and the rest of the political machinery of the local government in those place. Further, you might want to look at the history of the political party in question. Then you should ask yourself, if they still held to the political philosophy and beliefs they held in 1860, what would they do differently to bette

On the other hand, such districts can be poorer. While the suburban schools are wealthier. My state used to have heavy state funding of schools, to even out disparities), but that started to be cut. According to a quick google search, the year it came under heavy attack involved a state congress that leaned Republican.

That would make sense if not for two things. First, those inner city schools were already failing before the state funds were cut. Second, there is no correlation between how much a school district spends per student and its success at teaching those students. A few years back, the Washington, DC school district was spending more per student than any other school district in the country, yet was one of the worst school districts in the country (I have not seen the numbers for a few years, so it may no longe

You really want to state that there is no correlation between what a school district spends per student and success? Then I propose that you take a school district of your choice and educate them with no money (that means no facilities, no transportation, no teachers, no curriculum, no materials, etc) and I'll take the Washington DC school district. They will go to class every day for their entire K-12 education. Then we'll compare outcomes.

Right the explanation must be the fact that they have more money to spend on schools. It could not possibly be because those who have values that encourage their children to value getting an education are more likely to be wealthy, while those who do not encourage their children to get an education are more likely to be poor. It is not possible that the same factors which cause the parents of children in wealthy neighborhoods to be wealthy are the same factors which cause those parents to raise well-educate

if they still held to the political philosophy and beliefs they held in 1860

I'm not judging the rest of your post, but this here is a silly argument. In multidimensional political space, the one-dimensional Democrat-Republican axis of American politics has turned 180 degrees since 1860. It's like two fencers who were so busy fighting each other they didn't notice they switched position. Which is a nice demonstration of how ridiculous a two-party system is.

Similarly, there are faculty who want to do research and get in front of a lecture hall and regurgitate the same lecture they've been giving for 20 years.

This may sound bad (as Nelson no doubt intended) for subjects that are relatively recent, such as anything IT related, or the more advanced courses. But tell me, how much meaningful changes were there in the past 20 years for introductory subjects like algebra or calculus? Or the introductory to intermediate courses for most physical sciences?

Go read the Feynman Lectures and tell me how much change was needed due to advances since it was given? Except for maybe a mention of Higgs and LHC somewhere?

Education is not entertainment, if the subject matter have not changed, why should a good lecture needs to change for the sake of change? It's not like we are giving the lecture to the same audience 20 times. Except, maybe, due to the decrease in competency of the students?

Lecturing is an ineffective way to teach because most people cannot pay attention to and retain a traditional lecture. Someone who has been giving the same lecture for 20 years was teaching sub-optimally 20 years ago and has not improved. You are correct that they may not have gotten worse either.

Perhaps you enjoyed them, but it is highly unlikely you remember them. Physiological measures of attention, such as heart rate, show students do not pay as much attention to lectures past the first few minutes.

Not as good as a real lecture where you can ask questions at the end if there's something you can't pick up from the lecture. Watching the same thing you don't understand twenty times is not going give you the same missing piece that a lecturer can give you by explaining something in a different way.

Any kind of lecture is low-rent bullshit pedagogy. Real education has students read/experience "static" material on their own time and do interactive problem solving in face-to-face time with instructors. That, however, costs money.

Lecturing is an ineffective way to teach because most people cannot pay attention to and retain a traditional lecture.

That's why students are told to take notes. That's why students are told to study outside lectures; tutorials and — where appropriate for the course — practical sessions in labs reinforce the lecture. You don't learn by just listening to someone, but it is part of how you learn.

Lecturing is an ineffective way to teach because most people cannot pay attention to and retain a traditional lecture.

That's why students are told to take notes. That's why students are told to study outside lectures; tutorials and — where appropriate for the course — practical sessions in labs reinforce the lecture. You don't learn by just listening to someone, but it is part of how you learn.

THIS. Students that have problem learning from lectures most likely are treating the lecture as a movie (as the article alluded to), they expected to be passively entertained (a.k.a. spoon fed), instead of making an effort to learn actively. Then they wonder why they didn't learn anything and complained the lectures are too boring (i.e. not entertaining).

1. There's lots of us who hate lecturing, but basically have to do it because of pressure to teach as many students at once as possible. It's difficult to organize contact with large numbers of students simultaneously in formats other than lecture.

2. I'm not opposed to online lectures, and think they're probably the best option in some situations, or at least good supplementary options. However, are they really an improvement? People bash lectures, but unless you're lecturing

On the whole I agree with you - learning is hard work and expensive for both teacher and student. I have several times heard your argument that good lectures are interactive. It is equivalent to saying good lectures include things which are not lecture.

Based on physiological evidence, normal attention span is only a few minutes. I am not aware of any studies of how attention span is changing, but I doubt it is changing much. Great teachers of the past were great compared to their peers, not compared to modern techniques. And many of them did not lecture.

If you have trouble paying attention to lectures and learning from it, have you considered that, perhaps, you shouldn't be in college to begin with?

This is a discriminatory attitude. Disadvantaged students (for example, those from poor families) are less able to cope with ineffective teaching. Based on controlled experiments, good teaching benefits all students, but it has a bigger benefits for those who used to be considered "not college material".

You addressed your comments to me personally. Notice my user ID number. It has been some years since I passed all my lecture classes.

I think a major point is wasted. Certain researchers fund their research by teaching. Recently I read some blog, ( I'll try to find it ), where a mathematician asked that if Calculus is replaced by video lectures, how will mathematicians find the money to continue doing their research?

I'm not saying that we should continue to force students to listen to crappy lectures by teachers that only give lectures cause it funds their research. What I am saying is that research is often times important and we need an alternate way of funding it.

My daughter was quite interested in this for a while, but there is one serious problem: they are making a lot of changes at once, and evaluating the results will not be easy, especially with such a small sample of students who, by self-selection, are going to be anything but representative of the rest (for one thing, they are going to be big risk takers). It will take years to see how well this works, considering how difficult it already is to evaluate the quality of the education at various colleges.

I don't know how much these considerations influenced my daughter, but she ended up picking a conventional college, partly because she applied Early Decision and got in. Minerva might have been on her list for a second round. (And yes, she is a risk taker, and not interested in Greek life or football:)

The founders are smart people and what they say makes sense, but I know many smart people who made a lot of sense, and their startups still didn't quite work out.

It strikes me that at some point these coursera type systems will become solid enough that the major universities will begin issuing some sort of real credits for their completion.

The below ignores the other aspects of university such as meeting people, and that many courses do require very hands on interaction such as a chemistry lab. While this is true it there is potentially still many courses that do avail themselves to a pure online experience.

And we aren't all "sour grapes" about not getting admitted. Minerva offered free tuition to the first class of 45, which seemed like both a good deal, and appropriate given they were still going through "shakedown" (the interview by skype process was more like a high school play than a Broadway performance). There is no doubt that the model, given the time and attention these 45 kids will get, will provide for a stunning class. As does United World College, another free tuition experiment started by Armand Hammer which relies on subsidy to maintain recruiting excellence.

What remains to be seen is whether it succeeds in creating a sustainable economic model. Yes, the USA's universities have probably overinvested their endowments in a "country club" gyms and campus accouterments. But Minerva is "pure play", the equivalent of penny stock. Will the fact that these 45 students are impressive today cause impressive students to pay tuition tomorrow, and will the lack of accouterments generate savings for the student consumer, or be siphoned into the startup costs of Minerva? Since it will probably take 10 years before any of these graduates have a chance to be recognized, they have to either produce evidence of superior education and training, or continue to make it a high value, or have to compete more seriously with a Stanford/Harvard than they had to a $0 tuition. The fact that free software attracts smart users doesn't prove your software will take significant share from Microsoft, and the fact that you get smart students to enroll in free education doesn't signify the universities charging tuition are doomed.

If the impressive kids come out in 4 years and say the Minerva experience was "not ready for prime time" and that they wish they'd gone to college, will Minerva be able to fix the bugs in the software? By the way, my kid's going to a top Canadian university, $6K per year, and is certain to have a recognized degree in 10 years. The strong arguments Minerva makes about the true value of Harvard speak well for Kings and McGill. Twin goes to UWC, btw.

I teach Biology at a small prestigious liberal arts college. My students do their real learning in the laboratories associated with each course and in their independent research projects. Their research projects often run for more than a year and include full time summer research experiences - it is an apprenticeship. This is where they learn to be Biologists and where they get the value out of the college. No amount of book learning or seminar participation can prepare them for the challenges of actually doing science. Growing living organisms, troubleshooting experimental protocols, interpreting data, and having to write and talk about their results (which are rarely 'clean') gives them the skills to make discoveries which will drive technology forward.

Just to clarify. Lab experiences = building recombinant DNA constructs, making transgenic organisms, using $500k microscopes, taking advantage of staffed greenhouses and animal facilities. No amount of online simulation can come anywhere close to replicating time spent in a real research lab.